Telehouse, a specialist in high connectivity hosting solutions in Europe, has signed a partnership with the operator Jaguar Network, a B2B subsidiary of the iliad Group, for the development of hosting activities in France in the latter's datacenter in Marseille.

Named "TH1 Marseille", this infrastructure will provide new neutral connectivity solutions to digital players, with the same know-how, the same proximity in support and the same excellence in service that have characterised Telehouse's activity for 30 years.

This agreement echoes the growth of Jaguar Network, of which Telehouse has been one of the historical partners by hosting it in its TH2 Paris datacenter. In return, Jaguar Network is now offering Telehouse a new opportunity to develop its offer on its historic campus in Marseille.

Their common ambition is to contribute to making the city one of the top 5 most connected cities in the world, and to reinforce the Paris / Marseille digital highway, in order to place France at the centre of international data exchanges. Marseille's dynamism is based on its submarine cable network linking Asia/Pacific to Europe with a Marseille/Frankfurt/Amsterdam axis.

In 2023, capacity will increase from 150 terabits to 720 terabits thanks to the 8,000 km Google Blue Raman cable (India, Saudi Arabia and Marseille, avoiding Egypt).

Thanks to Telehouse's historical know-how and Jaguar Network's local presence, customers will be able to benefit from all existing or future fibres.

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Source : Datacenter Magazine

From January 2022, UK operator EE will reintroduce roaming charges in Europe. It is the first UK mobile operator to take this step, having previously said it would not reintroduce roaming charges.

It intends to charge its new UK customers extra to use their mobile phones in Europe. All new registrants, as well as users wishing to upgrade their plans from 7 July 2021, will have to pay £2 a day to use their plan in 47 European destinations.

The European Commission, meanwhile, proposed a few months ago to extend the abolition of roaming charges between different EU countries by 10 years. This measure, which has been in force since June 2017, was initially due to end in 2022. It concerns the 27 EU Member States, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, but not the UK. Indeed, due to Brexit, it ceased to apply EU rules on 1 January.

According to a Eurobarometer survey, half of Europeans with a mobile phone have travelled to another EU country in the last two years. In the summer of 2019, data roaming usage increased 17-fold compared to the summer of 2016, the summer before roaming charges were abolished.

Back in January, EE, O2, Three and Vodafone said they had no plans to reintroduce roaming charges, even if the Brexit gave them the opportunity to do so. EE now justifies that reintroducing these charges will "support investment in our UK-based customer service, and in our leading UK network". The additional charges will not apply to UK users in the Republic of Ireland.

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Source : ZDNet

According to French, German and Norwegian researchers, the GEA-1 and GEA-2 encryption algorithms used in mobile data networks in the 1990s and 2000s have been weakened, one of them from the outset. Based on 2G technology, they were intended to secure the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) standard. Today, this network continues to be used for M2M systems or as a backup for data, SMS and mobile calls. Most of today's terminals are GPRS-enabled.

The aim of these two algorithms is to secure the transfer of data between phones and base stations in order to avoid the interception of communications. However, the experts found, for example, that GEA-1 did not encrypt in 64 bits as expected but only in 40 bits. With a lower security level, a computer network can more easily discover the key by brute force and read the streams.

To support this theory, specialists reverse engineered GEA-1 and GEA-2. By recreating the former, they found that their algorithm was more secure than the original version. Disregarding the notion of chance, they believe that this weakening of security was intended from the design of the algorithm.

These algorithms were developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 1998 by a dedicated working group. The European body admitted that GEA-1 contained a weakness. But it explained that it had been introduced to comply with export regulations which did not allow for stronger encryption. For GEA-2, the rules were relaxed at the time of its design, but the researchers were able to decrypt the traffic. They therefore recommend relying on the more robust GEA-3 and higher algorithm.

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Source : Le Monde Informatique

SNCF Réseau's new subsidiary, Terralpha, has arrived to market the bandwidth offered by the more than 20,000 km of fibre that snake through mainland France under the train tracks. As the fibres are pulled from town to town, they do not suffer from the slowdowns caused by the connections that operators put on each branch line.

In addition, this fibre network provides a national alternative to the network of the four major operators. The 2,000 alternative operators will now be able to interconnect a head office in Lille with its branch in Marseille, without having to wait for weeks for authorisation, without having to pay the high price imposed by their national competitor. And, above all, with better latency.

These more than 20,000 kilometres of fibre were already available for hire. But it was a case-by-case process: Since SNCF Réseau only provides 100 Gbit/s links, it was up to its customer to install a router at each end to carry its traffic. And apart from the major operators, no one knew how to install a router on these fibres.

To connect, Terralpha chose to partner with the Telehouse chain of colocation data centres. "Our strategy is to be present in the telecom marketplaces. That is to say, in the rooms reserved for the interconnections of operators in the data centres. The most important ones are on the TH2 campus of Telehouse in Paris, which brings together 300 telecom operators," argues Gabriel Chenevoy, Terralpha's CEO.

Especially since TH2 has a state-of-the-art computer system that monitors the 50,000 fibres running through its operator rooms one by one. The curvature and path of each fibre would be carefully studied.

Apart from Orange and SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad are also starting to sell bandwidth on their national networks to alternative operators. Kosc was previously the only independent infrastructure operator through which local providers could offer national connectivity to their customers. It is therefore the one that Terralpha is now competing with. After financial setbacks, Kosc was finally bought out a year ago by Altitude Infrastructure, an ex-alternative operator that has refocused its activity on fibre installation.

Although Altitude Infrastructure enjoys a good image with local authorities, its challenge remains to link together fibre segments scattered over the territory. This is where Terralpha claims to have a head start.

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Source : Le Mag IT

The Internet services of 500 customers, including banks and airlines, were inaccessible for several hours due to a breakdown at Akamai. This was not a cyber attack but a technical problem. The problems were caused by a mishandling of Akamai's DdoS protection service.

Among the customers affected are three major Australian banks: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac and ANZ. Australia Post was also affected, as was the airline Virgin Australia.

The latest major internet outage occurred last week and was caused by CDN Fastly. Many people were affected by the outage, including Europe.

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Source : Kulture Geek

Many territories still do not have access to a fast and efficient Internet connection in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and elsewhere in France. This is why the State and Arcep have developed the New Mobile Deal in order to address this problem by standardising mobile Internet coverage at national level.

Although the State is the initiator of this project, it is the mobile operators who manage it directly. Free, Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR are therefore responsible for the investment in the design of these new networks. Even though there are no subsidies, the State is in fact piloting this bold project and sharing its objectives with the operators, who must align themselves with it.

According to the State services, in collaboration with the local authorities, 509 areas are deemed to be priorities in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. 64 new additional sites are to be equipped in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region following the publication of the latest order on 9 April.

However, due to the region's many mountainous areas, installing the equipment necessary for the network to spread properly is much more difficult. This explains why the region has so many areas without access to a good Internet connection and why it needs special attention.

However, the health crisis makes this project much more difficult to implement and there are many delays.

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Source : ECOMNEWS

According to the latest figures published by the Agence nationale des fréquences (ANFR), France now has 25,105 authorised 5G sites, of which 14,284 have been declared technically operational by operators.

Up 3.7% over one month, the increase in the number of 5G sites owes much to the legacy of past networks - and especially 4G. The ANFR points out that "almost all of these 5G installations have been authorised on existing sites already used by 2G, 3G or 4G technologies" and that only two mobile sites in France host only 5G.

According to operator statements, 56.9% of the 25,105 5G sites authorised at the end of May are technically operational. The main trends of the deployment carried out in a scattered manner by the operators to date are now emerging.

Free confirms its attraction for the 700 MHz band for accelerated coverage of the territory. 16,683 5G sites are counted in this frequency band, of which 9,584 are declared technically operational.

Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR have adopted similar tactics. The three operators rely on the 2.1 GHz band, which is already used for 4G. At the end of May, they had 8,376 authorised 5G sites in this band, with 3,973 declared technically operational.

However, operators are not forgetting about the "queen band" of 5G, the 3.5 GHz band, as they seem determined to move on to this specific 5G band.

The ANFR counted 8,550 authorised 5G sites in this band at the end of May, of which 3,973 were declared technically operational. This bodes well for the further deployment of the new generation of mobile technology.

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Source : ZDnet

The broadband and ultra-broadband market observatory for the first quarter has just been published by Arcep. The regulator notes that "the number of very high-speed subscriptions rose by 1.1 million, i.e. a growth rate of 170% compared to the first quarter of 2020".

This means that "the number of very high-speed subscriptions has reached 15.7 million, and now represents more than half (51%) of the total number of Internet subscriptions in France (+9 points in one year) and 53% of the number of premises eligible for very high-speed access, up 6 points in one year".

The figures for fibre rollouts are also upbeat: "Public Initiative Networks have achieved their best deployment quarter ever and are outpacing private operator rollouts in AMII zones. The overall pace of deployment remains high in the first quarter of 2021, with 1.5 million FTTH lines".

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Source : Next Inpact

For about seven hours on the evening of 2 June, the numbers for the Samu (15), the police (17), the fire brigade (18) and the single European emergency number (112) were virtually inaccessible. Orange, through its CEO Stéphane Richard, had then presented "its deepest apologies". Then, early this morning, on 4 June, the historical operator announced that it had launched an "in-depth" internal investigation.

This announcement preceded the meeting of the interministerial crisis unit. "Things are back in order" and "the situation is back under control as I speak", declared Jean Castex at around 9am, at the end of this meeting which he chaired.

"We deplore the victims who may have been caused by this serious incident", confirmed the Prime Minister.

The head of government insisted that "it will be necessary to establish very clearly the cause of the events that occurred and above all the means to ensure that they do not happen again."

For the time being, Orange has already launched an in-depth internal investigation. The telephone operator's general inspectorate "will have to carry out the necessary investigations to identify the precise causes of this incident and issue recommendations to draw all the necessary lessons", Orange said.

Conclusions are expected within seven days. "In connection with the interministerial crisis unit, we set up yesterday evening a dedicated unit to resolve any local malfunctions that might appear," added the telephone operator, while "disturbances" still remained on 3 June "in a random manner".

When asked about the origin of this breakdown, Stéphane Richard already ruled out the hypothesis of a cyber attack. This incident is "more likely" due to "a software failure in (the) critical network equipment", i.e. the platforms responsible for routing calls.

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Source : Les Echos

Bouygues Telecom Entreprises OnCloud is a new independent structure that benefits from its own infrastructure and Nerim's decade of experience, specialising in hosting and cloud computing.

"For the past two years, dozens of employees have been designing new infrastructures and offers based on our customers' real needs. What Bouygues Telecom Entreprises OnCloud offers today is unique on the market, both in terms of the quality of the advice it provides and its technical and commercial agility," explains François Treuil, Director of Bouygues Telecom Entreprises.

Bouygues Telecom Entreprises OnCloud is an operator, integrator and host all rolled into one and aims to establish itself as a pure player in the cloud. Its ambition is to be rapidly recognised as a trusted cloud, according to the new name given by the French government as part of the National Cloud Strategy. However, this recognition requires SecNumCloud certification issued by the ANSSI. This is a complex, restrictive and costly process that will take several months, if not years.

A new player that wants to reach out to a wide range of customers, including SMEs and SMIs, public authorities and large groups. The operator wants to offer public IaaS cloud services as well as help companies build their own private clouds.

However, the field is already crowded with American hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, IBM Cloud, etc.), small local hosting companies and OVHcloud and 3DS Outscale, which are already SecNumCloud certified. Not forgetting Scaleway and the still nascent Bleu (the result of a joint venture between Capgemini and Orange). And not to mention the Gaia-X initiative, which should also enable other European operators to establish themselves more strongly in France. The competition is going to be tough...

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Source : Informatique News

It is now the turn of the professionals in charge of connection to commit themselves to solving the problem posed by the lack of maintenance or connection to the fibre. They have committed, through the signing of a charter of good practice, to put an end to what the public authorities see as a major obstacle to the adoption of fibre in the country.

A series of commitments including that of limiting themselves to a single level of subcontracting, "with particular attention to the status and qualifications" of the subcontractors employed.

This is a challenge given that "cascading" subcontracting is often blamed for defects in the quality of connections. The signatory companies of this charter, representing 70% of the sector's players, have also undertaken to encourage the use of local employment and to support the training of their employees through the implementation of actions dedicated to initial training or skills upgrading.

These include Axians, Circet, Constructel, Eiffage, ENGIE Solutions, Firalp, NGE Infranet, SADE Télécom, Groupe Scopelec, SNEF Télécom, Sogetrel, Solutions30 and SPIE CityNetworks.

Commercial operators and infrastructure operators such as Altitude Infra, Axione, Orange, TDF and XpFibre had already committed themselves at the beginning of March to a new subcontracting framework contract (also known as STOC mode, for "Sous-Traitance Opérateur Commercial") in order to put an end to these repeated abuses which are poisoning the lives of users.

Unfortunately, this problem is not new. Indeed, a working group set up by Arcep on the subject already reported in 2019 on "significant rates of malfunctions in the execution of final connection and cross-connection operations at the mutualisation point".

It cited three main difficulties to be resolved in order to put an end to the proliferation of "noodle dishes": repeated non-compliance with the rules on cross-connection at the point of mutualisation, defects in the routes taken by the optical fibre which can lead to traffic jams at the optical connection points, and various acts of vandalism at the points of mutualisation.

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Source : ZDnet

After long negotiations, the government and Orange have just agreed on an action plan to improve the quality of service of the copper network. Indeed, even if the deployment of optical fibre is progressing rapidly, the 22 million French people who still have an active line based on this network must not be overlooked.

The plan therefore provides for an additional 10 million euros to be committed to 17 priority territories, as well as 123 new posts in departments under pressure and a 30% increase in national crisis response staff.

The incumbent operator will have to provide a back-up solution within a maximum of 24 hours from the time the incident is reported, provided there is mobile coverage. If the mobile network is not sufficient, a satellite connection will be made available from the town halls.

Local consultation committees will be set up to improve consultation between Orange and elected representatives. A national consultation committee will also include representatives of the Commission Supérieure du Numérique et des Postes (CSNP), representatives of associations of local authorities and government departments.

It should be remembered that the total dismantling of the copper network will begin in 2023 and will extend until 2030, as fibre optic coverage of the territory progresses.

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Source : 01net

At a conference organised to present a dedicated barometer produced by Infranum, representatives of the fibre industry and the authorities had reason to be pleased. Indeed, the sector should once again reach a milestone in 2021 with the deployment of 6.2 million connections during the year.

The fibre players have even allowed themselves the luxury of exceeding the government's objectives with forecasts of 87% of homes connected to fibre in 2022 instead of the 80% initially desired by the public authorities.

If the year 2020 had already seen the sector break all records for connections, with 5.8 million sockets installed, the current year is looking even better. And it is on the public initiative networks (RIP) that the sector's professionals have chosen to focus in 2021. Of the 6.2 million outlets expected in 2021, 3.6 million will be located in RIP zones, compared with 1.8 million in AMII zones, 0.5 million in very dense zones and 0.4 million in AMEL zones.

A slowdown is planned for 2022 with the deployment of 5.8 million sockets, the majority of which will still be installed in RIP zones. The result is that while 40.6 million homes will have fibre optic access by 2025, there will still be 6.5 million outlets to be installed between now and 2025 in order to complete the networks.

And this is where the problem lies: "if there are "only" 6.5 million outlets left to be deployed by 2025, these will be the most difficult", emphasise the industry's representatives.

And to point out that 2.1 million premises, i.e. the last 5%, will necessarily have to be financed via substantial public aid... Worse still, 3% of this "remainder to be deployed" will not be able to be deployed, due to technical and financial constraints. "For these homes, it will be necessary to study other avenues, such as satellite internet," says Infranum, which sees the launch of new satellite offers as an increasingly credible alternative for achieving the objective of very high speed broadband for all.

In order to achieve 100% of homes with fibre over the next decade, the sector's professionals are calling for the implementation of a universal fibre service.

But there are also other pitfalls in the provision of high-speed broadband for all. Starting with the quality of connections, where the average failure rate of connections is currently between 20 and 25%. And although the representatives of the sector and the public authorities made commitments a few weeks ago to combat the spread of "noodle dishes" in civil engineering cabinets or within buildings, the result will not be immediate.

Among the burning issues for the sector is also that of employment. What is to be done with the professionals involved in the connection process once it is completed? This question will continue to be asked in the years to come, especially as the sector has recruited 9,700 new employees in 2020, instead of the 5,500 announced last year, and plans to recruit 5,500 in 2021, rather than 1,500.

"Three points must focus our efforts: the transition from copper to fibre, improving the quality of connections and anticipating the post-2021 period, particularly with regard to employment," conceded Cédric O...., the Secretary of State for the Digital Sector, on Tuesday, while welcoming the work carried out so far, noting that "the figures are very good, but we must continue this collective work, because there are still challenges to be met.

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Source : ZDnet

Since its launch in 2010, France-IX has chosen to host its infrastructure on the TH2 site of Telehouse. The presence of Tier I operators and the reliability of its infrastructure, guaranteeing 99.99% service availability, made this choice an obvious one for France-IX.

Since then, the two companies have been engaged in a trusting collaboration in which the development of the community of members of the exchange and the ecosystem of Telehouse customers feed each other. The France-IX community reached 100 members in the first year of cooperation and 200 in the following two years.

The TH2 connectivity hub recently doubled its connectivity capacity with the aim of carrying more traffic and making Paris one of the most connected cities in the world within five years. This expansion responds to the growing demands of companies to interconnect with their ecosystem, while favouring the localisation of their data in France. It is also in line with France-IX's desire to strengthen the resilience and robustness of its infrastructure in order to offer extensive, natively secure and low-cost connectivity to local and international players, and thus meet the major challenges of competitiveness.

The doubling of France-IX's point of presence at TH2 opens up an additional reserve of available ports for new customers, particularly corporates who are increasingly outsourcing their IT infrastructures. They are thus extending their access to the Cloud and hosting their equipment for a direct connection to the France-IX core network and have the essential infrastructure to connect to their partners (GAFAM, SaaS application publishers and other Cloud content and services).

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Source : Datacenter Magazine

Paris, May 10, 2021 - France-IX, one of Europe's leading Internet Exchange Points (IXP), is moving into the Marcoussis campus of DATA4, a leading French and European data centre operator and investor, to optimise Internet connectivity for businesses. With this new point of presence, DATA4's customers will be able to interconnect directly to the France-IX exchange node, which, for its part, intends to develop its peering ecosystem.

[...]

"By connecting to an exchange point, companies gain in performance and have the necessary resilience for their critical applications while optimising their costs. France-IX's new point of presence at Marcoussis will allow DATA4's customers to optimize the way they exchange data to promote the hybridization of their platforms to the Cloud within DATA4's infrastructures," said Jérôme Totel, Vice President Strategy, DATA4 Group.

[...]

"Our move to DATA4's Marcoussis campus reflects our desire to address the enterprise segment, which is different from our historical members, as well as to address the demands of some of our existing members. By facilitating access to the Cloud, peering represents an essential vector for them to meet the challenges of digital transformation. This strategic partnership with DATA4 will allow us to pursue our growth strategy in France by expanding our network and our ecosystem," said Franck Simon, President of France IX Services.

 Read the press release